Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Michael Thomas to KC?

It's been a quite few weeks when it comes to player rumors, really since Omar Bravo left for Cruz Azul there have been few rumors regarding Sporting KC. As James said in his post regarding this rumor, it's been campfire talk for a short little while, and it does seem to make sense. Michael Thomas is currently playing with Ljungskile SK in Sweden. The KC native was drafted by the San Jose Earthquakes in the second round of the MLS Superdraft. But instead of signing with the Earthquakes, Thomas headed abroad where he signed with Halmstads BK in Sweden. In the two years since he left, he's played just over 50 league games and scored 8 goals from the midfield position.

Thomas would join a growing list of players from KC playing for Sporting, as the team already has Matt Besler, Kevin Ellis, and Jon Kempin. In fact Besler played with Thomas in both high school and college. It's a sign that KC has faith in the players being developed locally and hopefully is a sign of good things to come from KC's youth system.

The big question regarding this rumor is if San Jose still holds Thomas' rights after drafting him. I believe they still do for a short period of time. Unless something has changed in the past few years regarding the draft, the time will end in early 2012. In the past, teams held the rights to their drafted players for two years. Since two years have almost passed since Thomas was drafted, I am assuming that Thomas would then go through the discovery process as he is not in the national team pool and has not played for any US youth teams. We'll see what comes of this rumor, but I would not be surprised if KC does get Thomas signed.

Seth and Besler played on the same KCFC team (86/87), and Kempin also played for KCFC (92/93) before joining the Juniors program. Thomas played on the KC Legends (87/88). All of them were coached by Gareth Hughes. Not sure who Kevin played for besides the Juniors during his ladder years.